Saturday, January 01, 2005

Where's The Boy?

Some may have been wondering where The Boy went in the last blog.
As most of you know, The Boy is Butterfly's husband? Shouldn't he be part of this LOTR fest too.

Yes and no.

Yes, The Boy saw parts two and three at the theatre with us over the past two Christmases. Yes, since the previous blog, he has now sat and enjoyed the third DVD, The Return of the King, with us. For that's what we all did last night, on New Years Eve, after a game of Trivial Pursuit in which he and mother trounced father and daughter ... in a rare fluke may I add.

No, he was not terribly interested in viewing yet another reprise of Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. Or perhaps he was; perhaps he was simply more consumed by other interests: such as purchasing and installing a new video card for his computer.

You see, he has contracted the dreaded Gaming Affliction. He plays online and has special gaming nights when he and his youthful male mates adjourn to some sort of common location where they can play games together. When I say that, I am unsure whether people can every play computer games together,but at least they can be in reasonable proximity to one another. They can make a night of it: ride there and back together; break bread together; play in the same room; and, play the same game at the same time. They are networked but at their own solitary computers — in something the same way as you and I are now, except we do it not simultaneously.

I understand this fascination with computer games — to some degree at least — for I was also once that age. I obtained my first computer when the computer era was young. It was an Atari 800 with 48k of ram and a cassette drive; I used a, small, ancient, and snowy TV for a monitor. It took four minutes for a 16k cassette game to load. I thought I was on the cutting edge, and I suppose that, archaic as it seems now, I was.

I played Pole Position, Frogger, Pac Man, Mario Brothers, Baja Buggies, Space Invaders, and I don't know what all. I was older then than The Boy is now, but it all seemed new, fresh, and wonderful to me. One day, games lost their appeal. Oh, I suppose it wasn't really one day, but some sort of a gradual dimunition occurred over a period of time. In the event, such games interest me not at all anymore: except for the occasional foray into simple, five-minute games, such as Spider Solitaire.

I suppose The Boy thinks me an old poop for being so disinterested. He must think that it will never happen to him, and that he shan't ever shrivel and wither like this old codger. He possibly thinks that he will forever maintain his current, youthful interests. However, and as incredulous as he might be if and when he reads this, he shall not. One day he will notice that his interest in gaming has faded. He will not attribute this to a tragedy induced by advanced aging. He will think it normal because he will naturally be drawn to other pursuits.

He will be correct, for it is completely normal to change. What dullards we would be if we always remained the same, always retained the same interests and viewpoints. Each age of life has its own interests and merits. If someone had once tried to inform me that I would prefer cooking or writing blogs (such as this) to playing Space Invaders, or watching hockey or football, I would probably have thought him daft.

Now, I wonder where the future lies. What interests and pursuits will draw me in another five years' time? I cannot tell — nor do I wish to spoil the surprise.

1 comment:

I recall spending hours playing tetris in the 80's and then Half-Life cast a brief spell over me with its 3-D first person shooter format, but I got over it. So will The Boy. My son has had what they call LAN parties where a dozen young men set up a local area network in the living room, drink beer and play computer games late into the night, but he got over that as well. What next? I don't even want to know!

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About Me

Hi, I'm AC or Anvilcloud or even John if you prefer the humdrum name of my humdrum life. I am in my mid-sixties, father of two women, grandfather of a girl and a boy, retired teacher, happily married for a long time although I can't speak for the happiness of my spouse, Cuppa.